Three weeks in

Three weeks in!

My old boss at UCLA texted me recently that he hoped the "firehose was not running too strong." Drinking from a firehose is actually a great analogy for how I'm feeling, and most weekdays I drive home with my head spinning a little bit because of the vast amount of information and the huge opportunities present here. With all that said, it's good to know that I'll stay well-hydrated here for the foreseeable future. 

The highlight of my third week here was getting to speak to the Seattle Internal Medicine intern class at their orientation. The energy and positive vibes were infectious, and I also got to visit the UW botanical gardens for the first time. I shared a story with them to remind them that at the end of the day, it is always always about the patient.

Welcome to UW DOM and I can't wait to meet you all! And if you get lost in the hospital in the upcoming weeks, you can rest assured that your department chair is also brand new and wandering around lost. 

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend. I actually went to medical school in the small island city of Galveston, TX which was also the birthplace of Juneteenth as the site where Union troops arrived on June 19, 1865, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. UTMB Galveston had an extremely diverse student body and patient population (including the Texas prison hospital) and in those days, I was actually quite fluent in medical Spanish. My favorite and most meaningful gig in Galveston was as the volunteer co-director of the free St. Vincent's clinic which served the marginalized uninsured patients in that community.

My roommate and I used to drive to Houston an hour away to a multitude of private practice clinics to collect free drug samples. I was always amazed at how generous those practices were, and we were able to keep our free clinic well-stocked with medications for hypertension, diabetes, and a variety of simple infections. 

Over the past couple weeks, I have had the chance to meet with our DOM DEIB leadership team. You may have heard that David Horne is stepping down from his role as Associate Chair of DEI for the DOM later this year. David was kind enough to stay for 6 months longer than planned to support me as a new chair and I want to personally thank him for that but also thank him for all of his contributions to the DOM DEIB mission.

We will be opening up a search soon to find his replacement and fortunately Sean Greenlee will stay onboard to support the new leader. In this context I have been reflecting on our DEIB priorities as a department, and I can already see a number of opportunities:

1. Improving the diversity of our faculty to better serve the diversity of our patient population. This alone is a concrete way to reduce healthcare disparities. 
2. Increasing our level of community engagement. At my prior institution we partnered with several FQHCs and community-based organizations across southern California so that our faculty could provide clinical care at these sites. It was a win-win situation for everyone - the FQHC, the faculty member, and especially the patient who might not otherwise have any access to subspecialty care. It was a really fun and meaningful part of my job. 
3. Supporting research in healthcare disparities, especially with the shifts in federal funding.

I plan to meet with Bessie Young and Paula Houston in the UW Office of Healthcare Equity soon to align priorities and brainstorm about how we can work together on the community engagement piece. Stay tuned!

For those of you who are fathers, father figures, pet fathers, or celebrating your own fathers, partners, or fathers-in-law, I hope the weekend was particularly enjoyable. 

Cheers,
Tisha

P.S. I'm running out of socks but I've ordered more!